In the sport of paintball, a gun or marker is used to fire balls or pellets with paint or other dye (“paintballs”) in a competitive arena or environment. A common adjunct to the marker is a loader, which assembles to the marker and acts as a reservoir and feed mechanism to quickly and easily provide paintball ammunition for firing by the marker. Loaders are by their nature relatively large in volume compared to the marker, for storage of a reasonable quantity of paintballs, and current models generally sit atop the marker. The loader is supplied with paintballs via a large supply opening in the top of the loader.
Paintball events generally require participants to move and fire quickly, and in doing so jerky or random motions with the marker and loader can occur. With such movements, if the loader's supply opening is not covered, paintballs can be ejected or fall out of the loader through the supply opening. Loaders have been proposed with a firm cap for the supply opening, e.g. one that screws or snaps onto the loader to cover the opening. Such caps provide assurance that no paintballs will escape, but require extra time and force or effort to remove during an event, when a refill of the loader is necessary. Such extra time and effort is undesirable in fast-paced paintball competitions.
Devices known as feedgates have been proposed to provide a partial cover for the loader supply opening, so that a snap-on or screw cap is unnecessary. Such devices are better for paintball containment than having no cover at all for the supply opening, but include some drawbacks. Among these include the lack of a full-cover cap, which may be needed if a paintball competition occurs in rain or other inclement weather, the general permanence of the attachment of feedgate pieces to each other and to the loader, and difficulties in accurate placement of pods or other containers of paintballs relative to the feedgate for resupplying the loader. There remains a need for feedgates for paintball loaders that overcome such issues.